Prison Turns Jim Carrey Gay

Perhaps shell-shocked by the bad reception his last movie, The Number 23 got, Jim Carrey has been slow to find something else to do. Right now the only movie he has coming out is some voice work in Horton Hears a Who, and let’s face it, no matter what Mike Myers and Cameron Diaz may try to tell you voice work is barely work at all for these people. I doubt they take it all that seriously, all the more reason great voice actors like Billy West ought to get more work.

But the point here is Jim Carrey hadn’t lined up another movie. Since he has no movies to promote, he missed the MTV Movie Awards last night for the first time in, well, a really long time. The MTV Movie Awards just don’t feel right without Jim weirding things up.

This morning Variety broke the news that Jim has finally found something new to do. His next movie will be a dark comedy from the team who wrote Bad Santa, called I Love You Phillip Morris. From the title you might think it’s another riff on the whole smoking thing, but apparently Carrey plays a conman who falls in love with his cellmate and as a result makes several prison escapes. Not sure why he had to make several, usually one does the trick. I guess they didn’t take.

It sounds like a wacky comedy, but apparently the movie is based, at least in part, on the real life story of a reporter named Steven Russell. Russell was a married father who landed in prison who did indeed go gaga for his cellmate. When his cellmate got out, he tried to escape, not to be with his kids, but to be with the guy who used to ass rape him twice a week. They describe the character of Russell as “affable” but if you’re his kids or his wife, you probably think he’s kind of an asshat. The movie was pitched as Catch Me If You Can meets Brokeback Mountain, which ought to be all you need to know about it.

As an aside, what is it with Hollywood portraying homosexuals as home-wreckers? It’s great that movies are at least a little more willing to tell the stories of gay characters, but do they all have to revolve around straight guys with wives and kids ditching them to run off with their fishing buddies? Something about that just doesn’t seem right. It’s not just men either, mainstream films about lesbians seem to have the same problem. Gray Matters comes out June 19th and it’s the story of a lesbian who tries to steal her brother’s wife.